Inscrutable Oriental

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Throughout the years, people from East Asia have been depicted in European media as being more reserved and stoic than Europeans. This comes from the perceptions of European merchants, soldiers, and officials unable or simply unwilling to appreciate the astonishingly diverse social customs of a region of many million square kilometres and more than 300 million people (from the 17th century onward). Faced with a continent even more heterogenous than their own, they more-or-less gave up on trying to figure out what each region's 'hat' was and simply wrote them all off as 'inscrutable' or mysterious/unreadable.

If treated positively, a character who follows this trope can come across as being a calm, cool, and fairly collected (if a bit eccentric) person who may also serve as a source of wisdom and encouragement. If treated negatively, characters come across as being overly dour, uptight, dull, and all around boring fellows who seem to have trouble comprehending concepts like leisure or fun. The distinction is similar to that between Stiff Upper Lip and British Stuffiness, respectively.

One reason for this trope being less popular nowadays is its association with offensive Yellow Peril villains, who were frequently untrustworthy, scheming Chessmasters who used their lack of emotion to disguise their motives.

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Examples:

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Anime and Manga

Japan from Axis Powers Hetalia, pictured above, who is extremely popular in his country's fandom due to the self-deprecating stereotypes he embodies. His memorized rules of conduct consist of gems like agreeing to consider options when he actually means 'no', never giving straight answers in a corner, becoming more polite when he is annoyed by other people, and apologizing when others are causing trouble.

Taki from Maiden Rose, although done rather interestingly so that he has his defrosting moments while at a foreign military academy and then suddenly switches to "inscrutable" mode upon returning home, only to confuse the hell out of Klaus who goes with him.

Comic Books

The new Judomaster's first appearance in Justice Society of America is characterized by her being silent, cold and reserved out of combat. Mind you, before then, she'd been portrayed as witty and perfectly capable of speaking English, but these things happen. Mind you, she did warm up a bit when she fell for Damage.

Mocked in a strip of the Italian comic Sturmtruppen where a crossdressing spy is ordered to escort the Japanese ally to another base, and affirms that "Nothing can surprise these inscrutable orientals". Cue to the Japanese ally trying to hump him.

The English lawyer's Chinese assistant in The Letter, who maintains his air of obsequious politeness even as he demands $10000 blackmail in return for handing over a letter that incriminates the lawyer's client.

Mr. Miyagi from The Karate Kid appears to be this at first. As we (and Daniel) get to know him we learn this couldn't be further from the truth.

Parodied with a line from the western comedy The Great Bank Robbery, something along the lines of: "You sure are inscrutable, Fong. Just like all you Secret Service fellas."

Seraph and the Keymaker from The Matrix films were meant to invoke this trope, fulfilling the "Orientalist fantasy".

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn features a Chinese Launderer character who's stereotypical in other ways, but it actually calls out this trope. The young heroine sees the Chinese man as a wise mystic and assumes he's listening thoughtfully when she talks to him, when in reality he doesn't speak English and is just waiting for her to leave.

In The Westing Game, Mrs. Hoo is seen this way at first, but it soon becomes obvious that it's solely a language barrier.

Inverted in Scanners Live in Vain. The Habermans and Scanners are astronauts who have had their nerves severed to avoid "The Great Pain of Space" experienced while in orbit. As a result, they are very emotionless, but Chang, the Chinese scanner on the crew, is much more expressive and empathetic than the rest of them.

Live-Action TV

Señor Chang, the Stereotype Flip Spanish teacher in Community, rants about this. Chang himself averts the trop thoroughly, being a loud-mouthed maniac who always wears his heart on his sleeve.

In season 2 of The Mole, Dorothy was so withdrawn and emotionless that many other contestants suspected her of being the Mole. It turns out she wasn't; she deliberately invoked this trope to draw contestants' suspicions toward her and away from the true Mole so that they would flunk on the quiz about the Mole and be eliminated. It worked well enough for her to win in the end.

The series bible for Star Trek: The Original Series explicitly describes Sulu as being the total opposite of this. (This got a nod in the animated show; see below.)

Played for laughs in Scrubs: J.D is narrating that many factors influence how each individual patient handles pain. On "race," we see a sushi chef with a kitchen knife buried in his shoulder, stoically asking "Does what hurt?"

Occasionally played with on Barney Miller with Detective Nick Yemana, who was pretty scrutable but also a world-class Deadpan Snarker. A blind man who claimed he could perceive character described him as calm, stoic, and in-control... that or Japanese. And when Dietrich expressed admiration of the stoic Japanese attitude towards death, Nick whispered to another detective that he personally planned to go out kicking and screaming.

Someone once told him that the rest of the world sees Agateans as inscrutable, and he decided this was a good idea. He is very inscrutable, and goes everywhere with a gang of large guards chosen for their inscrutability.

Video Games

Shen Yu in Evil Genius is described as "inscrutable", which is not surprising as he's a take on Fu Manchu.

The Matrix: Path of Neo has this for most of the Asian people, particularly the old men. Especially, the old Chinese herbalist.

The ethnicity of {...} from Hanna Is Not a Boy's Name is unknown, although he's vaguely Asian: he has almond-shaped eyes (more noticeable when they're not surrounded with black stuff) and black hair, and apparently has a sentimental attachment to paper cranes. And he matches the wise-but-stoic part of the trope well, commenting that he's been told he's "hard to read", and smiling so rarely that Hanna considers it a bit of an event when it happens. So he might be this, or he might not. Or maybe being dead leaves you a little detached from emotional ups and downs. It's hard to say.

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